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Attention BC Liberals

In 1653, with great prescience, Oliver Cromwell spoke about you in England’s House of Commons:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

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Ah, dear Norm, you left out the next but last line restated here by Leo S. Amery on May 7, 1940 to Neville Chamberlain in the Norway debate.

“Somehow or other we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory. Some 300 years ago, when this House found that its troops were being beaten again and again by the dash and daring of the Cavaliers, by Prince Rupert’s Cavalry, Oliver Cromwell spoke to John Hampden. In one of his speeches he recounted what he said. It was this: I said to him, “Your troops are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters and such kind of fellows…. You must get men of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they[e] will go, or you will be beaten still”. It may not be easy to find these men. They can be found only by trial and by ruthlessly discarding all who fail and have their failings discovered. We are fighting to-day for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are. I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go”.

On May 10 at dawn, Hitler invaded Luxembourgh, the Low Countries and France, Chamberlain resigned and that afternoon Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain, the day and much more than that were saved. Amery went on to serve Churchill, the bigger boy he had pushed into the pool at Harrow, faithfully and well. There was a tragic ending for Amery – his son John broadcast for the Nazis, he was tried, convicted, sentenced to hang and his father refused to intervene. He was hanged. So, of course, was William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw. P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves, also broadcast, albeit briefly for the Nazis and went Scot free.

Rafe, two things: firstly William Joyce was American-born and raised in Ireland. It is therefore arguable that there is no way he could have been guilty of “treason” against the UK, which was not his country.

Secondly, the P.G. Wodehouse story is far, far more complex than you suggest. He was interned, at the age of almost 60, and his broadcasts were far from being propaganda. He did admit to having been naive to make them.

And he didn’t really “get away scot-free”: he may not have gone to prison, but he never felt able to visit his native land again after the war and his knighthood did not arrive until 1975, just weeks before his death.

True. His father was Irish. They got him on his British Passport. It was a fascinating appeal, part of my Law School reading. In my opinion then and now it was a terrible decision. I should have mentioned that John Amery’s brother went on to a very distinguished political career. I have somehow always felt sorry about John, a misguided, mixed up kid who was hanged while Sir Oswald Mosely, an MP and Minister, married into the British Aristocracy, Churchill or was it Clemmie’s cousins I think, was an actual Nazi, invited violence and anti Semitism, because of Diana’s family and connections plus his money suffered not a whit except for being separated for a bit from Dians in his comfy wartime confinement and died in his own bed. I always had the feeling that John was hanged because of a perverted British sense of fair play and that if he’d been a butcher’s son in Leamington Spa, he’d have just done a bit of jail time. I have a harder time with Wodehouse. I love his stuff but 60 is hardly senility.he knew a war was coming, knew he would be a star catch and knew he shouldn’t broadcast for the Germans however innocent the content having no idea how they might have used his words. So, his knighthood was postponed, poor chap, while the super patriot Noel Coward had his postponed because Churchill thought his expense accounts too high and of course he was, ahem, gay. Strange lot, the Limeys – they have the world believing they invented fair play and clean justice but when you look at the wrong people hanged, Amritsar, Omdurman and the Somme they make Fuzzy Wuzzy and the hearhens they wiped out look like rather decent chaps. ‘Ere’s to Fuzzy Wuzzy and his ‘ome in the Soudan, ‘e was a poor benighted ‘eathen but a first class fighting man …. and, as I recall, “‘e was a big, black, bounding beggar but ‘e broke a British Square”. Ah yes, good friend, “mother of the free”, they were! St Georges taught me that – life untaught me. But the buggers were brave, no getting away from that!

What we need is for a few of the recently elected Liberals that were in super close races to just cross the floor to the NDP/Green coalition. I mean jumping ship and casting off values and integrity is a Liberal mainstay in BC. The current “leader” showed just how committed the party is to its core values, that is say anything to stay in power and not much else. If i was in their shoes i would just follow her lead and walk across the floor to become practically folk heros in my opinion. She is going down hard and shes willing to take you all with her. Do the province a favor and help us get a look at the books and see what this cabal has been up to with our public wealth.

Thanks for all your work, however, you have chosen to quote Churchill so I must comment and ask is this a debating strategy to give one’s point weight and legitimacy. No question, Churchill led a nation through its darkest hour, he is an icon of Western Civilization and he united the world against the vilest Right Wing crusade that drenched the world in five years of blood. Churchill was an example of how nationalism, the flag and religion is used to give homage which clouds our humanity.

Let’s take a look at the man that you quote. He was a war monger like Hitler. He was a womanizer and a drunk. He was a white supremacist like Hitler. He defended the British use of concentration camps in South Africa where some 28,000 Dutch people and 14 000 South African blacks died. He as Lord of the Admiralty used mustard and chlorine gas against Kurdish Civilians. He said “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes…[It] would spread a lively terror.” He participated in scorched earth policy cleansing whole Valley, burning homes and crops in the Sudan. To him blacks were “kefirs” and East Indians “fakirs”. He called Gandhi “the little naked fakir”. He saw the whites as Aryan stock that was destined to rule the world. All of this sounds kind of familiar does it not that we attribute to the man with the hair comb mustache?

” Many of his colleagues thought Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races.” The question we need to ask but some of us are blinded by nationalism we will ignore it. Did Churchill fight the Nazis because of democracy or because he wanted to save the British Empire. I do not ask this question because I want to denigrate any race or group I ask it berceuse its human race’s right to know. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

Churchill was flawed as are all men but that is no justification for repeating false claims about him. I’ll respond to one that you make.

Regarding the use of gas in Iraq in 1919 (when he was Secretary of State for Air and War not First Lord of the Amiralty) he specifically wrote about “lachrymatory” (i.e. tear) gas and not “the most deadly gasses”. Furthermore in the end neither type of gas was used and I’d suggest there is a big difference between talking about something and doing it.

He deserves to be judged by more than a hatchet job in a newspaper article.

OK so what Lord of “assholes or whatever” he used gas on the Kurd’s as he did against the Russians. He burned 150, 000 in Dresden. Not a nice man for you to defend.Churchill’s idea was to use the M Device against the Russian Bolsheviks. 50,000 of them were taken up in planes and then dropped on the Bolshevik Red Army positions in Northern European Russia in Bolshevik controlled villages between August and September 1918.’ He was as brutal as Hitler and Stalin combined.

More he was a leech on his friends who used him to advance their own economic interest just like Clark’s many financial contributors are doing. You and I are debating their criminality but like Churchill said history will be kind to him since he plans to write it. Seems like majority have swallowed the BS.

My fellow alumnus of Sidney Sussex, Cambridge (i.e. Oliver C) may have had his faults, but he certainly had a way with words.

Incidentally, his skull was dug up in 1960 and reburied in the college. The college medics took an X-ray of the skull, which I had the good fortune to be shown these nearly 50 years ago. You could still clearly where the spike had been inserted to affix the skull to a post for public display.

My God – a little joshing with my frienf dgrg brought Trkla up from the deep! Quite unintended I assure all. He should first understand what any history student does – never judge a man’s personal habits other than against his own society’s standards. What we now think of as raw racism, while no less wrong, was rampant where I grew up – right here in Vancouver. i am a student of Churchill and interviewed many very close to him including his private secretary, Grace Hamblin, biographer Martin Gilbert, eriting assistant Dir Willian Deakin, oersonal secretary Anthony Cave and political opponents like Lord Roy Jenkins, Lord Denis Healey, as well as several other historians, his daughter Lady Mary Soames and grandson Winston. I interviewed Paul Lukaks whose brilliant 5 Days in London gives the picture of the man Churchill was when all depended upon him. I’ve spent hours in Chartwell as well as the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms, visited his birthplace in Blenheim Palace and his grave at Bladon. My abiding pictorial memories are the RAF veteran saluting his funeral train, the cranes in London bent as his funeral barge passed and Clement Attlee, a very old man, in the freezing cold at St Pauls at the rehearsal for funeral the next day. It’s a spectacular tribute that Churchill should be so roundly criticized by Trkla for doing these terrible things in the Sudan and South Africa when he was first a lowly subaltern then a young newspaper reporter, i have read and interviewed several unfriendly biographers and have never seen any auggestion he wasa womanizer and the only straying from his long, happy marriage was not by him. Churchill was an acknowledged master of the English language, a Nobel laureate for literature and a very fine painter. It is a great tribute to his saving of his country and the world, that yapping, ill- informed, nobodies can criticize him without fear of a knock on his door late at night.
I leave Trkla with this question – if the very best friend you have in the world were to hire the wordiest biographer how long would your biography run? As you ponder that question I will remind readers that the Official Biography of Sir Winston Churchill runs 8 volumes of close io 1000 pages per volume, not counting a half a dozen or more compsnion volumes of documents and not counting any of the scores of books, countless articles written and speeches given by this man for whom the word remarkable doesn’t begin to do justice.
To other more current matters.

I think Rafe’s informed defence of Churchill’s memory will bring an end to this conversation. We have current affairs to worry about and it is something we can affect. Talking about events that happened in the first half of the last century are appropriate but will not at this site become an ongoing diversion from the events of 2017.

That is fine I did not plan to go there but like in anything we do retention of positive and neglect of negative does not allow us to balance the good for some while ignoring the sacrifices of others. The fact that you chose Oliver Cromwell and Rafe added Churchill to show the sorry state of BC politics is abuse of reason when we ignore the flaws in our example . Oliver, Churchill, and Rafe should not be allowed to escape being reminded of the coercive measures that they used while in politics. Rafe (1975-81) like Christy Campbell/Clark used irrationalism of the masses to undermine education, healthcare and the environment. Using innuendos and hitting bellow the belt to give his argument validity is unbecoming a man that I have come to admire, however, its understandable that ones involvement in all of this clouds ones objectivity. Insight into the past, our own and others, gives us the capacity to change and project a new vision into the future. Its disappointing that you removed my last post.

Last word to Trkla. Mair’s history in a nutshell – Without God there would have been no apple tree, without Abraham no tribes of Israel, without Jesus and Mohammed no Crusades, without Lincoln no Civil War, without Frau Hitler no Adolf and if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle.

Sure. I’m a mere 85 1/2 tomorrow, bedridden with various illnesses associated with a misspent youth (and later) combined with antiquity, heartily disliked by leaders of all parties, a wife I love very much who would take the next ferry out of Lions Bay if I even thought about it out loud plus my generous physician allows me two glasses of crappy wine per day if I stay still. Oh yes, I have no drivers licence and can no longer drive a car anyway.

Now I admit those qualifications point clearly to a political career, Glenn, but can you help me find a party?

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